When professional wrestler Anthony Bowens posted a video of himself goofing off with his boyfriend, Michael Pavano, he didn’t think too much of it.

“It was this past fall and I was three months into a relationship with my boyfriend, Michael Pavano. Mike and I had uploaded a video to YouTube on his channel called ‘The Laughing Challenge,’ where he described me as his boyfriend,” 26-year-old Bowens explains in an op-ed published by OutSports.

“The video was a blast to do, but I worried that someone from the wrestling world would stumble across it and learn my secret. I decided to let it be posted anyway.”

It wasn’t until weeks after the video had been online that his received a text message from one of his wrestling buddies.

“Bro, why didn’t you tell me?” the text read.

“Much to my great relief, he told me he didn’t care and that I was one of his best friends in the business,” Bowens says.

In January, Bowens decided to make the announcement “official” on Facebook:

“After hitting send, I immediately turned off my phone. I didn’t want to think about what people would write. After about 30 minutes I told Mike to check his phone,” Bowens recalls. “He had the biggest smile on his face, our friends in the room cheered, and I made the decision to turn on my phone. The response was overwhelming positive.”

Since then, Bowens hasn’t been shy about sharing his relationship for the world to see on social media:

I can’t even begin to tell you how many people I’ve spoken to over the years who are hiding and suppressing themselves out of fear of being judged. If I can help inspire at least one person to fight past their struggles through my journey or inspire at least one person to live their dreams, it’s all worth it for me. The journey and the fight is just beginning!

Ha ha…He just came out so give him a few more months and he will be a real gay…I get the feeling he is one of those wannabe “straight-acting/masc” guys who thinks he isn’t a man unless he pretends he still likes women…

What ever the reason he decided to come was his but personally, were I as young and cute as he is I would have followed the example of The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) and simply kept ’em guessing and kept going for the big money. What he gained from letting the entire world know that he likes to get it in certain places is beyond me. Until now I never heard of this guy and it is now a guarantee that within hours he will be back in obscurity. A six-door chauffeur driven rolls-royce beats the shit out of a Metro bus pass any day.

@DMRX…………..hey, at least YOU think he’s strait. The rest of the world (such as Michael Musto of the Village Voice) all believe he was smart and kept it to himself. He was know to have a roving eye for guys at parties which is why the majority of “stars” stayed away from him and it wasn’t easy to cast him at one time either. Once he started being photographed with women and came up with a “girlfriend” his roles suddenly changed (as did his paychecks). I’ll let you go figure from there how financially beneficial it was for him to keep his mouth shut.

It is an unfortunate instinct that many have. But it’s also unfortunate that so many homo men still use “bisexual” as a gateway transition identity or use it to hold on to hetero dynamics because their ego won’t allow them to completely let go of sex and relationships with women or because they’re contending with internalized homophobia or to hide their narcissism or to hide the fetishes they’ve developed that makes them won’t sex with multiple genders.

Being dismissive towards men who identify as bi isn’t going to help. But gay and straight men using a multitude of identities to shield what’s actually going on in their lives and in their heads and what actually drives their sexual behavior doesn’t help either. Ultimately, it’s the truly bi-sexual men (men who have genuine sexual attraction to men and women, not just the ability to enjoy sex with men and women and who look at men and women as real potential romantic partners) that end up getting hurt because of the cycle of distrust, disregard, self-hate, lying, inferiority/superiority complexes, secrecy and perversion. And this man might be genuinely bi.